digital music and the music business

YouTube is so popular that it was bound to attract competitors; and just-launched Vessel may have found the Google owned video giant's achilles heal - low payouts to creators. Along with details, here's how to check out Vessel for one year completely free. But you need to act fast.

YouTube has released a collection of music videos, behind the scenes interviews, and other exclusive content featuring the 2015 YouTube Music Awards recipients as a part of the 2015 YouTube Music Awards Show, presented by Kia.

YouTube Cards allows musicians to raise funds, sell merchandise, beef up your mailing lists, announce new tour dates, and drive video views. Have you tried YouTube Cards? Here's how they can make a difference for you.

YouTube monetization and micro-licensing have become essential sources of income for a growing number of artists and labels. Now smart startups like Rumbefish are creating the tools to manage, track and monetize these new outlets.

Superstars teamed with MixRadio to create a collaborative lip-sync of Charlie XCX's hit song "Boom Clap" in celebration of today's International Day Of Happiness. Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth!

Music helped make YouTube successful, and now YouTube is helping the people who make music find more success on and off the video streamer. Its all part of a trend we're seeing at Spotify, Pandora and elsewhere: finding ways to add value to creators that don't include raising payments to them.

SXSW On will run for the duration of the 10 day festival, highlighting the best of original music, independent films, emerging technology, cuisine, and gaming culture in an effort to deliver the look, feel, and spirit of SXSW to audiences around the world.

In many ways, YouTube’s dominance in the online video space familiarly echoes Apple’s historic dominance in the downloads market – plenty wish to compete given such an obvious demand, but few companies are capable of taking on such a behemoth. Times have changed.

YouTube has succeeded in establishing itself as the premier destination for online video consumption, so how is it possible for a platform with an audience exceeding 1 billion viewers to remain an unprofitable business? It's really quite simple.

YouTube is thanking artists who have shown significant growth in viewership and engagement by honoring them with a YouTube Music Award (YTMA). YTMA recipients were selected by the fans, as award criteria was based on collective interaction over the last six months.

YouTube doesn't sit still long enough to get comfortable. After the launch of YouTube Music Key, YouTube is now playing around with yet another way to engage viewers - a multi-angled video. The ability to toggle back and forth between multiple camera angles as the video is playing offers a viewer driven personalization of the playback experience. In the early stages of experimentation, popular indie artist, Madilyn Bailey, best known for her covers is the first and only artist to trial this feature on their channel.

Music video platform Vevo has reached a milestone of more than 10 billion monthly global views for the first time. In January, that meant 10,335,997,898 video views. That's an 86% increase over January 2014’s 5.4 billion views.

As part of a two year long program that promotes up and coming music artists across a variety of genres, from indie rock to hip-hop, Skype has been giving music fans direct access to emerging music artists during the “Ones to Watch” tour. As part of a successful launch, they've been working behind the scenes with rising alt-country artists, Devil Makes Three, asking their fans to vote for their favorite track. Having established that "Hand Back Down" is the fan favorite, Devil Makes Three has recorded an acoustic music video for their fans, available exclusively at Hypebot.com.

As YouTube carves out a larger space in the music community, the way music videos are being made and consumed is changing. With millions of artists and creators collaborating constantly, stunning music videos have been made that sometimes challenge typical production conventions. Along with YouTube’s Music Key, there are now multiple forms a music video can take. This combined with a lower barrier to entry has given rise to excellent alternatives you can consider when deciding how to publish your music on an evolving video streaming platform.

NAMM 2015 made it feel like Christmas came twice this year. It was the year that forced every major to cave in to the decades of pressure. An era of consumers moaning at companies to put down their software, and start making circuits again. It’s safe to say that they all delivered… to different extents. And that’s what made this month’s crop of demos range from astral modular bliss, to awkward Ketamine-induced monkey patching. So let’s recap the show’s biggest announcements with the greatest demos we all have to see.

No music industry story has gotten more play in the last week than Zoe Keating's struggle with YouTube. After the independent musician shared her conversation with YouTube over a new agreement that would keep her from monetizing her content if she did not agree to new terms that included involvement in YouTube's Music Key paid service, a compant spokesperson called Keating's concerns "patently false."

Rap music has grown to be one of the most beloved genres of music. Over the years, rap has evolved to reach people of different nationalities and backgrounds. In recent years, rappers in Germany are selling more records than their US counterparts. What is the secret to their success and how can you build that buzz for your next album? Lukas Caminzindshares in this article tips to create buzz for your next album just like the Germans.

Last summer, there was some kerfuffle about YouTube allegedly threatening to kick musicians off of YouTube if they didn't agree to license their music to the subscription service it was building. At the time, we wrote about how this was overblown.

It is easy to think of the internet as a mature medium, especially for those who were born into the internet era. However we are still at the earliest of stages. We are where radio was in the 1930’s and where TV was in the 1950’s: the first signs of the future markets are in place but the real maturation is yet to come. The greats of those early days, the Marconis and the RCAs, are now long gone but at the time they looked like they would rule forever. A similar long view should be taken to the internet.

On Friday evening, a YouTube spokesperson called "payently false" claims by indie artist Zoe Keating's claim that she was being forced off the video service if she did not agree to all the terms of a new contract adding Google's paid Music Key service. Keating rebutted by releasing a rough transcript of her call with her representative at YouTube.

Google has cut deals with the major labels and most independents to launch YouTube Music Key, a paid music and video subscription service. But truly indie artists like Zoe Keating are now being forced to sign a new Google deal as-is or be pulled off YouTube entirely.

"They were nice and took time to explain everything clearly to me," Keating wrote on her blog. "but the message was firm.... I need to sign on to the new Youtube music services agreement or I will have my Youtube channel blocked."

The New Musical Express (NME) has compiled an impressive list of the weirdest band names of 2015. Alongside that list, they posted their reaction to the name, their expectations, and their first impressions. While some of the bands lived up to their not-so-great names, a couple served as reminders to never judge a book by its cover - or a band by its name.

In a tragic twist of events, an innocent Apple employee put the kabash on a would-be Reggae superstar when he bans him from completing the recording of his new sure-to-be hit single in the Apple store. That is not a typo. Someone actually thought they could get away with recording a music video on the webcam of an iMac in an Apple store owned an operated by the single most brand conscious tech dynasty of all time. As anyone with an ounce of common sense can summize, that didn't go so well... and judging by the outcome of this "music video" this young man's temper tantrum is the only thing about his career going viral.

Google and YouTube have been plotting ways to encourage people to pay for streaming music. YouTube Music Key, currently in beta, charges $7.99 and up for a premium overlay to YouTube. Now a feature rich Chrome extension, Streamus, does most of that for free. Developed by an independent third party developer, Streamus has been in beta for almost three years; and the care spent building the app shows.

With new stats showing user traffic up a surprising 575% from this time last year, MySpace is causing a bit of a buzz amongst social media connoisseurs. Generating over 300 million video views in the month of November, MySpace ranked 16th most popular video provider in ComScore's Video Matrix ranking begging the question: Could the social media pioneer really be making a comeback?